Re: [idn] Comments on protocol drafts

[RJ Atkinson <rja@inet.org>]

At 08:50 15-02-00 , Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote:
>Well, (Mr Seng, correct me if I am wrong :-) that is not
>quite accurate. If you look in a typesetting manual (say
>the Ikarus set from URW) you will see that Taiwanese
>has some pronounciation/soundex codepoints which are
>extra to unicode. Same for very formalized mandarin,
>like what ones use to reprint (historic/legal) documents. 
>
>In fact over 1.700 extra 'casts's are needed beyond unicode
>by a good university printer to cover the asian main land.

Dirk,

         I am actually a speaker and reader of Chinese, having
lived in China in my early years, so I have some modest amount
of personal first-hand knowledge in this area.  

         Where I seem to have confused you is the word "form".
It is clearly the case, as I've already noted, that there are
particular characters that exist in one area or another but
not in all areas.  The basic form of a Chinese character is, however,
constant across all dialects and areas.  Please note that I'm
using "form" in quite a precise manner here.

         In short, we might be in violent agreement.

Ran